New York City to keep Christopher Columbus statue after `hate` review(Artdaily.org)

14 january 2018 02:14:38

New York will keep its famed but controversial statue of Christopher Columbus following a review of `symbols of hate,` as the United States debates tributes to figures whose legacies are increasingly questioned. Democratic Party Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered the 90-day review after deadly violence at a neo-Nazi rally in Virginia last August built nationwide momentum to remove symbols of the pro-slavery Civil War South. The commission recommended that just one of four statues on public land -- that of a gynecologist who experimented on enslaved black women without anesthesia -- be relocated from Central Park to a Brooklyn cemetery. A plaque dedicated to Philippe Petain, a World War I hero who later collaborated with the Nazis and lead Vichy France, would remain in place, the commission